


innocence dies screaming

by for_darkness_shows_the_stars



Series: What Comes After [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Canonical Child Abuse, F/M, Fluff, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Past Child Abuse, Post-The Last Agni Kai (Avatar), Pre-Relationship, The Obligatory 'Katara Finds Out How Zuko Got His Scar' Fic, Ursa's not here but she's a topic of discussion, What else is new, because I adore Katara, did I mention how much I adore Katara recently?, so i guess it can be read as platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28168170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/for_darkness_shows_the_stars/pseuds/for_darkness_shows_the_stars
Summary: From the aftermath of the Last Agni Kai to a starry night under Yue's divine light, the story of how Katara learned about Zuko's scar.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: What Comes After [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1981828
Comments: 19
Kudos: 138





	innocence dies screaming

Exhaustion permeated every inch of Katara’s body; her hands shook, her vision blurred, and if she had actually bothered to look in a mirror at some point over the past few hours, she would have noticed patches of deep purple under her eyes.

She was running on pure adrenaline.

The crimson of the sky was slowly fading, turning orange, then purple. In a palace full of possibly-hostile imperial firebenders, the fact that the additional power granted to them by the Comet was waning was most certainly welcome news.

(When she closed her eyes, she could still see the flashes of orange and blue clashing together. The amount of power both royal siblings were wielding mere hours ago was unfathomable. Just the fact that they were able to control so much fire spoke volumes of their skill. Katara had no doubt it would have overwhelmed a weaker bender.)

The Fire Sages who’d carried Azula off, and proclaimed Zuko the victor by the virtue of the Princess forfeiting the Agni Kai the moment she chose to attack an observer assured them that no harm would come to them, but Katara knew better than to trust anyone here.

“You need to rest,” Zuko rasped, almost pleading. The scarlet of the star burst-shaped blotch on his sternum stood out starkly against the alabaster of his skin.

“Can’t,” Katara mumbled.

“Katara, _please_ ,” he said through clenched teeth, gripping her wrist gently. “You just beat _my sister_ , my _firebending prodigy_ sister, _during Sozin’s Comet_. You can barely stand.”

“I am _not_ weak,” she growled, head snapping up. It pulled painfully at the exhausted muscles of her neck, but she didn’t care.

“I never said that,” he replied softly. “But you’re running yourself ragged. I’ll … I’ll survive a few hours.” He looked up at her, golden eyes sincere and wide. “Please, Katara … you need to _rest_.”

Katara bit into her lip. “But …”

“ _Please_.”

“ _Fine_ ,” she relented. Her voice was hoarse from disuse. “But let me just wrap it up for you, okay? Do you have any fresh gauze around here?”

Zuko inclined his head towards the lowest drawer of the nightstand. “There.” Katara knelt and pulled the drawer open. Rummaging through it, she found not only a roll of white bandage, but also a jar of burn cream and a tincture of painkillers.

And under them all, almost as though it had been hidden, was a black and white painting of a woman. Though it would spur her curiosity at any other time, she didn’t care a whit about it at the moment.

She applied the burn cream, made him swallow the painkillers, and wrapped his chest in bandage before locking the door. She had half a mind to encase it in ice as well, but rational thought won out there—without her awake to maintain it, the ice would just melt in the blistering heat of the late Fire Nation summer.

Slowly, hyper-aware of everything around her, she stumbled towards the bed and let herself sink into the heavenly soft mattress. She folded herself into Zuko’s side, careful not to aggravate his injury.

“Aang’s going to come back,” he whispered, barely audible. “And he’s going to win.”

She wished he didn’t sound like he was trying to convince himself. At the end of the day, their victory here would mean nothing if Ozai returned victorious at the head of his airship fleet, the Earth Kingdom but a smouldering, scorched remnant at his back.

“He has to,” Katara said. “He has to.”

She burrowed her face further into his side, savouring his warmth, and fell into fitful sleep, full of crimson skies, blue fire, and a Princess’s hysterical sobbing.

* * *

“Okay, Your Fieriness, stop being a fussy baby and let me take a look at it,” she said, days later, after the rest of their family had returned, alive if not exactly uninjured, after Ozai had been dragged away in chains, defeated and subdued, after Zuko had been crowned.

“Seriously?” Zuko asked, but he did relent, sitting down on the bed. “Fieriness? I’m never doubting you’re related to Sokka again.”

“Very funny,” Katara huffed, coating her hands in water. “Continue talking like that any you can find someone else to change your bandages.”

She didn’t mean it, of course. Things have gotten better since that first, fateful night, but the thought of handing off his healing to anyone else still filled her with panic.

She reached into the drawer again, like she had done every time for the past few days. Her fingers brushed against a rough surface.

It took Katara a moment to remember what it was—a portrait of a beautiful young woman, her lips downturned, her night-dark hair pulled up into a topknot, bound with a curved flame-like headpiece.

“Who’s that lady on that portrait in your drawer?” she asked casually, after they were finished, and sharing a pot of tea beside the window that overlooked the royal family’s private gardens. It should have come as a no surprise that the Firelord’s quarters had the best view in the Palace.

Zuko stiffened, and for a moment Katara was worried his injury was acting up again, but …

“That’s …” he said, voice rough and choked-up. “That’s my mum.”

“Oh,” was all Katara could say.

“After … um, after she was banished,” Zuko began, “it was kind of forbidden to talk about her. Everyone pretended like she never even existed.” He ran a hand through his hair, voice small and quiet. “I hid that picture, because all others were getting burned, and I … I didn’t want to forget what she looked like.”

Katara didn’t know what to say, so she just reached for his hand over the table and gave it a gentle squeeze.

He flashed her a small, barely-there smile, and reached for the drawer, pulling the portrait out and running pale fingers over its surface.

And Katara laid her eyes on Princess Ursa.

She was beautiful, in that elegant, cold way most Fire Nation women were. The portrait had no colour, but Katara imagined the ebony of her hair, the alabaster of her skin, the amber of her eyes. The colours poured into the image before her eyes, and all she could do is supress a shudder when she realized she was looking at Azula.

Older, sadder, without the cruel gleam in her eyes, but …

“She’s very beautiful,” Katara said.

Zuko scoffed. “She looks like Azula, I know.”

“Well …”

“It’s okay,” he shrugged. “It makes sense she’d look like Mum. After all …” his lips curved into a small, bitter smile. “I look like _him_ , don’t I?”

“Zuko …” Katara said, something constricting heavily in her chest. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“But hey,” he went on, voice dripping with false cheer, “he made sure I can never look _exactly_ like him, so …” And then he waved a hand over the left side of his face.

Katara’s head snapped to him. It suddenly became so very hard to breathe.

“Excuse me?” her words were but a breath.

“Huh?”

“Repeat that, please.” It felt as though the words were coming from somewhere far away, and not her own lips. Or maybe they were, and she was the one so far removed.

“He made sure … I can never look exactly like him?” Zuko echoed, sounding puzzled. Once again, he reached up, fingers brushing over the jagged edge of his scar. “You know …”

“No,” Katara said resolutely. Her voice didn’t sound like her own. “I do not.”

“Oh.” Eyes of pale gold darted uncomfortably, settling anywhere but her face.

“Zuko …” she said softly. “He … did he …?” She couldn’t bring herself to finish that sentence, as thousands of nightmare-scenarios danced before her eyes.

“Um …”

She looked down, to her hands, white-knuckled in her lap. Her nails bit into the skin of her palms, but she barely felt it.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I … you don’t have say anything.”

He was quiet for a long, heavy moment. Or maybe it wasn’t so long. Maybe it was Katara’s perception of time that was warped, as she imagined, all out of a sudden, a Zuko with a symmetrical face—two brows, dark and fine, sharp cheekbones, eyes of pale gold, neither covered in a dull sheen of white.

It was too weird—he’s always had the scar, from the very first moment they’d met. At first, it was only a thing that differentiated the Fire Prince from all the rest amber-eyed, pale-skinned Fire Nation monsters. They’d toyed with the idea of her healing it, yes, but it was a moot point now. The Spirit Water was gone and spent, and she really doubted Arnook would be forthcoming again.

“It’s not that,” Zuko said uncertainly. “It’s just … I never really … um, told anyone? People usually just _know_.”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“I … I _want_ to,” he admitted. Katara looked up, surprised—his forehead was scrunched up, golden eyes fixed on the teacup in his hand. Steam wafted from its surface, though Katara’s own had long cooled. “It’s just …”

“You don’t have to do it … now,” Katara said slowly. She reached over the table and brushed her fingers over his forearms. “When you’re ready—I’ll wait for you.”

“Thank you,” he said, voice hoarse. The tea in his cup _boiled_.

“Don’t thank me,” Katara shook her head. “Not for this. Please.”

* * *

Two days later, they were feeding the turtleducks in one of the private gardens. It was still mostly unkempt, even though the effort at restoring it had clearly been made. In a couple of months, it might just return to its former glory.

They were mostly silent, but silences with Zuko were never uncomfortable.

Katara swirled her finger in the water, bending small waves that brought the tiny turtleduckling with a particular design on its shell she’d marked as her favourite closer.

“That’s cheating,” pouted Zuko. “And you’re scaring Cherry-paste Bun.”

Katara chuckled. “It’s not my fault you can’t bend water. Besides—wait. _Cherry-paste Bun_? You know all their names? Wait … are they _all_ named after food?”

He crossed his arms and hmpfed. It did nothing to disguise the scarlet blush that spread over the pale skin of his cheek. She took absolute delight in it.

“C’mon, don’t tell me His Incandescent Majesty is ashamed of his pets!”

“They’re not just pets,” Zuko muttered.

“They’re your _Bosco_!” Katara exclaimed, grinning like she’d just won the lottery. Chery-paste Bun feasted on the grains in her hands, her soft beak nipping at her palms.

“Bosco?”

“The Earth King’s bear,” she clarified. “ _And_ his best friend.”

“The Earth King has a bear? What sort of bear?”

She shook her head. “Just … bear.”

“That’s weird.”

“Yep.”

He didn’t say anything else. Sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, she though she saw him open his mouth, then close it again.

He wasn’t ready. But that was okay.

She’d wait for him.

For as long as he needs.

* * *

Yue’s light illuminated the dark night, helped by a myriad of twinkling stars, as brilliant as the Water Princess’s smile had been in life. Katara and Zuko had long abandoned the towering piles of scrolls and paperwork that came as a side-effect of establishing world peace.

This late in the night, they were both far too tired to be of any use. Still, the moon kept Katara awake, and though it was the sun that filled him with strength, Zuko refused to be outdone.

So they sat in comfortable silence on the terrace of his quarters, a teapot that had long gone cold on the table between them. Not that it mattered, of course; having a firebender for a best friend did have some perks.

Katara let her head fall back, eyes tracing the curved shape of Yue’s crescent in the star-speckled sky. The stars here were foreign to her, even if she knew those of the South Pole by heart. Someday, she would ask Zuko about them.

Not tonight, though. Tonight’s silence felt sacred somehow. It felt like breaking it for anything as simple as talk of constellations would be a sacrilege.

Zuko, however, has never been all that religious.

“I was thirteen.”

His voice was quiet and soft and hoarse. Katara tore her eyes away from the moon to look at him. She didn’t even realize she expected to meet his burning golden gaze until she saw it was absent.

Zuko was looking down, at his hands that twisted uncomfortably in his lap. “I was thirteen,” he repeated, “when I convinced Uncle to let me attend a war meeting.”

Katara’s breath stilled in her chest.

“I wanted to be a good Firelord one day,” he whispered, tracing the flame design carved into the signet ring on his hand with one finger. A symbol of his new power, more subtle than the crown he wore in his hair. “I just wanted to learn.

“There was this … plan. A strategy. You remember General Bujing, whom we sacked yesterday? He proposed it.”

Katara remembered General Bujing all too well. An old, thin man, whose features seemed to have been moulded to sneer. She’d hated him instantly.

“He was going to use a division of fresh recruits … they were only a few years older than we are. He was going to send them to provide a distraction for a battalion of experienced earthbenders.” He shook his head. “And while they were being slaughtered, a battalion of firebenders would attack from the rear and finish the earthbenders off.”

Images of Jang Hui flashed before her eyes. She shouldn’t have been surprised that Ozai would be willing to sacrifice his own people like that. And yet … it did.

She didn’t dare speak, lest she spook Zuko away.

“I couldn’t just … just let them do that!”

No, he wouldn’t have. Even when he was chasing them, embittered by his exile and jagged from years at sea, he was honourable.

“So I … I spoke out. I was a dumb kid and I spoke out. And I’m not sorry! I’m _not_. It was wrong, and no one else was willing to _say_ anything!

“But …” his lip curved bitterly. “Ozai was so damn _threatened_ by me speaking out like that. He saw it as an act of disrespect. So, as punishment, he ordered me to fight an Agni Kai. Like with Azula.” A choked-up laugh escaped his lips. “You know what’s the worst of all? I was _thirteen_. Until a few days ago, when Ozai changed the rules to make Azula Firelord, the age barrier for Agni Kais was _sixteen._ So, technically, what he was doing was illegal. Not that anyone had the guts to call him out on it.

“I thought I was going to have to fight Bujing,” he whispered, small and broken. “Ozai made it sound like that.”

Katara felt tell-tale heat pool in the corners of her eyes.

“But when I turned around, it was Fa— _Ozai_. And I wouldn’t fight him … _couldn’t_. He is … was … my father, and I was loyal and I couldn’t fight him.

“I went down to my knees, and I _begged_ for mercy. And he was advancing at me, and telling me to stand up and fight, but I …” He bowed his head, and a single tear escaped his good eye. “And then … he reached out. With his hand. And I … for a moment, I thought he was gonna hug me and tell me everything was gonna be all right. Stupid. It’s not like he was _ever_ like that.

“But … I hoped. And then … he—he said _‘You will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher.’_ And he … he lit his hand on fire and—and … he held me down, and it hurt _so much_ , and I don’t even remember how long it was, because I blacked out and—”

He stopped suddenly, hands flying to his mouth, eyes firmly shut. “It was _wrong_ ,” he said, muffled. “It was _evil_ , and I didn’t deserve it … I know that now.”

Katara jerked out of the stupor she’d fallen into. “Zuko …”

“I’m _fine_ ,” he snapped, and Katara wanted to laugh, because that’s exactly what she’d told him in the aftermath of the Agni Kai, and she hadn’t been _fine_ in any way, shape, or form then.

“You’re not,” she said, soft, yet firm. Reached out, brushed her fingers over the silken sleeve on his forearm. “You’re not. And that’s okay.”

His hands fell from his face and fisted in his lap. “I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t.”

“Never,” Katara said, resolute.

“He’s evil. I _know_ that.”

Deliberating only for a moment, Katara rose from her seat and came to kneel before him. Lightly, she took his hands into her own.

“He’s evil, and I don’t care … I don’t _care_ what he thinks. But …”

“He’s still your dad,” Katara whispered.

“I have Uncle.”

“Yeah,” she smiled softly. “Yeah, you do. But it’s okay to feel like this. What he did … I can’t even imagine.”

Eyes of gold found her own. Hesitantly, Katara dropped one of his hands and reached up, to the left side of his face.

“May I?”

His throat bobbed, but he nodded. Slowly, giving him plenty of time to move away, Katara reached out and brushed her fingertips over his skin. When he didn’t react, she traced the edges of the scar. Flat along the bridge of his nose, with five distinct points that reached up into his hairline.

It was shaped like a handprint. She’d never noticed it before. She’d never be able to _not_ see it now.

“You are so much more than what he tried to reduce you to,” she whispered. “So much more.”

His eyes flew open, looking down at her questioningly.

“I’m honoured to be your friend.”

His arms wrapped around her shoulders, toasty and safe, and Katara thought she could stay this way forever. **  
**

**Author's Note:**

> Confession time: 
> 
> Do you know what inspired me to have the FN have a signet ring (well, two, actually, one for the Firelord, the other for the Firelady/Fire Prince Consort, YES I've thought about this way more than I should have)???
> 
> Do you???
> 
> Brace yourselves ...
> 
> Mr M. Night Shyamalan's The Movie That Shall Not Be Named. 
> 
> Yes.  
> I'm perfectly serious.  
> Since that movie doesn't have the crown from the cartoon, they replaced it with a golden ring inscribed with the traditional insignia for Fire.  
> I ... actually like that?  
> The movie itself though is ... *shudders* Even WORSE than I thought it'd be.
> 
> AAAANYWAY, guess who also made up this amazing Zutara scene involving the *other* ring?  
> That's right!!! This bitch right here!
> 
> Merry Christmas to everyone who's celebrating!!!
> 
> [Tumblr.](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/stars-and-darkness)


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